by David Weber
"First," Honor told her with a tight smile, "I don't want any more accidents. If we seem to be sneaking LACs into the middle of their fleet under stealth, then there's entirely too much chance that they might mistake it for a serious attack. We don't need that when things are already this tense with the Andies." Several heads nodded, and she went on. "Second, I want them to know that we know they're here."
"What if they have orders to attack if they're discovered, My Lady?" Yu asked.
"I doubt very much that they do. I could be wrong, of course, but we can't afford to paralyze ourselves trying to second-guess what they may or may not be planning to do. My feeling is that this entire operation was set up to be as covert as possible. Under the circumstances, I think it's more likely they have orders to withdraw if their presence becomes known. If nothing else, I'd think that they'd have to be unhappy about how the Andies may react to their having sent a major fleet presence this close to their borders. At any rate, I think it's worth the gamble. We'll drop in on them, let them know we've realized they're here, and see how they respond."
She looked back at Truman.
"So, as I say, I want you to be obvious, Alice. But I also want you to emphasize the need to be cautious when you brief your COLACs. I don't want anyone crowding the Peeps—I mean, Havenites—closely enough to provoke them into defensive fire. Clear?"
"Clear," Truman agreed, and Honor was pleased to taste her intense satisfaction at having been handed the assignment. Some task group commanders would have been wondering if they were being sent out as a way for the station commander to put a convenient scapegoat into the line of fire in case something went wrong. Other station commanders would have been completely unable to delegate the authority, which might have suggested a certain distrust of their subordinate's capabilities. There was no need, she thought, for Alice to know just how hard she really did find it to delegate in this instance. Not because she had any qualms whatsoever about Alice's abilities, but because the responsibility for what she'd just ordered done was hers, not Alice's.
Unfortunately, with everything else that was going on, she needed to be right here, just in case it all hit the fan while Alice was away. Speaking of which . . .
"In the meantime, Alfredo," she continued, turning back to Yu, "we'll keep your other people here with Alistair's at Sidemore to cover it during Alice's absence. I think it's at least possible that no one in Nouveau Paris knew Benjamin had sent you out here when they dispatched this Second Fleet. I'd just as soon keep it that way in case things go south on us."
"Understood," Yu agreed.
"In that case, people, let's be about it."
* * *
"Hecate is over two days overdue, Sir," Captain DeLaney pointed out quietly.
"I know, Molly. I know."
Lester Tourville frowned as he contemplated the unhappy implications of DeLaney's reminder. There could be any number of reasons for Hecate's failure to arrive as scheduled. Unfortunately, he couldn't think of one of them that he liked. And whatever it might have been, his orders were clear. It seemed extremely unlikely that anything could have given away Second Fleet's presence, but extremely unlikely wasn't the same thing as impossible. Nor was it impossible, however unlikely, that Hecate's nonarrival was the result of something besides the normal hazards of navigation.
"All right, Molly," he sighed. "Pass the movement instructions. I want to pull out for the alternate rendezvous within the hour."
Chapter Forty-Seven
"Nothing, Ma'am."
"Nothing at all, Wraith?" Dame Alice Truman asked.
"No, Ma'am." Captain Goodrick shook his head. "We've swept the system pretty thoroughly. I suppose it's remotely possible that there could be one or two stealthed pickets hiding out there somewhere. After all, any star system is a mighty big haystack. But there's no way there's anything I'd call a fleet inside the system hyper limit."
"Damn," Truman said softly. She and her chief of staff stood on HMS Cockatrice's flag bridge looking at an astrographic display of a completely empty star system. Truman knew how badly Honor had wanted to either confirm or deny the presence of a Havenite fleet. And how badly she'd wanted for any Havenite admiral to know he'd been spotted. Unfortunately, an empty star system accomplished neither of those objectives. The mere fact that there was no one here now didn't indicate a thing about who might have been here when Hecate and Pirate's Bane fought their brief, bloody battle. Indeed, it was entirely possible that the destroyer's failure to arrive with their mail had inspired the people waiting for her to move to another address.
And the fact that there was no one here to note Truman's own arrival prevented her from delivering Honor's message.
"All right, Wraith," she said finally. "We've swept the system without finding anyone; now all we can do is get back to Sidemore ASAP. Her Grace needs to know what we found—or didn't, depending on how you want to look at it—and if there was a fleet here, it's not here now. Which suggests it's somewhere else. I'd just as soon not have it turn out that 'somewhere else' is launching an attack on Sidemore while we're out looking for it here!"
* * *
Honor regarded Truman's report with profound dissatisfaction. Not with Truman or her LAC crews, but with the elusiveness of the Republic's "Second Fleet."
George Reynolds had finished his systematic dissection of every fragment Captain Bachfisch's people had been able to extract from Hecate's mangled computers. It was unpleasantly evident from those fragments that Thomas Theisman's navy was extremely good at maintaining operational security. No one aboard Hecate had been in a position to initiate any sort of data purge—not while Pirate's Bane was blowing their ship apart around them. And Reynolds had confided to Honor that it was fairly evident that Lieutenant Ferguson, the "civilian" electronics specialist Gruber had sent across to Hecate's wreck to tackle her computers, was not merely military in background but extremely familiar with Peep naval hardware and software for some reason. Despite the catastrophic damage the destroyer had suffered, it seemed evident that Ferguson had gotten everything that was left in her computers, and there was actually a great deal of background information.
But there was very, very little about the organization and nature of this "Second Fleet" . . . and none at all about its purpose in Silesia.
That lack of information made Truman's failure to find the Havenites even more frustrating. No one on Sidemore Station doubted Second Fleet's existence, but without more information on it, her options for preparing against whatever it intended to do were limited, to say the very least.
She growled something under her breath that made Nimitz raise his head and look at her disapprovingly from his bulkhead perch. She felt him considering something a bit more demonstrative, but he decided to settle for sighing with exaggerated patience, instead.
She looked up from the report long enough to stick her tongue out at him, then returned to her contemplation of unpalatable reality.
At least there hadn't been any fresh shooting incidents with the Andermani while she tried to figure out what to do about this live grenade. Not that she expected that to last much longer. She'd hoped the arrival of Herzog von Rabenstrange might have brought about some easing of the tensions between their forces, but it hadn't happened. At least, unlike Sternhafen, he appeared to have no interest in actively fanning the fire, but he also hadn't renounced Sternhafen's obviously self-serving—and grossly inaccurate—official verdict on the Zoraster Incident.
Chien-lu Anderman was far too smart to believe Sternhafen's version. More than that, he was too good an officer not to have investigated what had happened on his own. So if he was signing off on Sternhafen's obstruction of the truth, it was a very bad sign. Worse still, she couldn't believe he would have been a party to any such action without very specific policy directives from the Emperor. And if his directives precluded the minimization of tensions, then the chances of avoiding a more direct and vastly more dangerous confrontation were slight. Indeed, her greatest fea
r was that this relative quiet represented the lull before the storm while the Andies finished deploying their assets.
However she looked at it, she was caught between two threats. She would have felt reasonably confident about dealing with either of them alone, at least long enough to be reinforced from home, with the backing of Alfredo and the rest of the Protector's Own. But even with that welcome reinforcement, she lacked the resources to protect her area of responsibility from two totally separate threats. And so far, the High Ridge Government had declined to provide her with any additional support.
But that wasn't the worst of it—not by a long chalk.
She sighed heavily, her face creased with a worry she was careful never to allow anyone else to see, and faced the most unpalatable conclusion of all. If the Republic of Haven was prepared to launch an attack clear out here, then they must be simultaneously prepared to do the same thing much closer to home. Committing an isolated act of war on the scale represented by an attack on Sidemore Station in a region so far away from the front line between them and the Manticoran Alliance would be an act of lunacy. This had to represent only a single aspect of a far larger operations plan . . . and the ships committed to it, however many of them there were, likewise had to represent a force Thomas Theisman felt he could afford to divert from the truly critical theatre of operations.
That was what worried her most. She knew Thomas Theisman personally, something only two other Manticoran admirals could say. Both of those flag officers were right here with her, and all three of them had the utmost respect for him. More, she knew that both Hamish Alexander, who'd also fought him, and Alfredo Yu, who'd been his one-time mentor, shared that respect. So if Thomas Theisman felt he had sufficient naval strength to open a war on what amounted to two totally separated fronts, then it was painfully obvious to Honor that ONI had catastrophically underestimated the new Republican Navy. Theisman might be wrong in his force estimate, but she found it very difficult to believe his calculations could be that far off . . . especially given that the strength of the Royal Manticoran Navy, unlike that of the Republic, was a matter of public record following the bitter budget debates. Unlike Jurgenson, Chakrabarti, and Janacek, he knew exactly what his opponents had.
But there was nothing she could do about that from here. She'd made every defensive adjustment within her own command area that she could think of in the absence of any fresh instructions from home. All she could do now was to report the scraps of information they'd managed to recover from Hecate to the Admiralty and hope someone back home drew the appropriate conclusions.
And not just that Sidemore Station was urgently in need of additional reinforcements, either.
She contemplated Truman's report one more time, mental teeth gnawing at the rocky shell of her dilemma while she felt the impending collision sliding towards her like ground cars on glaze ice. If only Alice had found Second Fleet! At least then she'd have proof for Janacek and Jurgenson. As it was, all she had was circumstantial evidence, and she knew the mere fact that that evidence came from her would make it suspect in Janacek's eyes. Had Patricia Givens or Thomas Caparelli still been at the Admiralty, she wouldn't have worried about that, but Janacek was backed by Chakrabarti and Jurgenson, neither of whom was likely to stand up to his prejudices, and that meant—Her dreary mental recitation of all the disasters looming on the horizon paused, and her eyes narrowed as a new thought thrust itself suddenly into her mind.
Wait, she thought. Wait just a minute, Honor. Janacek and his cronies don't operate in a pure vacuum . . . and the Royal Navy isn't the only one caught in the middle of all this. For that matter, the Manticoran Alliance treaty partners aren't the only people who have a stake in it! Of course, if you do it, and if you're wrong . . .
Nimitz's head snapped up, and she tasted his sudden spike of emotions as he sensed her inner turbulence. Then his ears flattened as he felt her reach a decision, and she looked up to meet his gaze. He looked back at her, the very tip of his tail twitching ever so slowly while he sampled the resolution flowering suddenly at her core. Then his ears came up and his whiskers quivered as he radiated the unmistakable image of a huge smile.
She smiled back fiercely and nodded.
After all, it wasn't as if she wouldn't have another career to fall back on if it didn't work.
* * *
"So I'm afraid," Arnold Giancola said regretfully, "that Foreign Secretary Descroix's response is scarcely what I could call forthcoming."
The Cabinet room's oppressive silence underscored the massive understatement in which he'd just indulged himself. The actual text of Descroix's note had been made available to all of them in electronic format before this meeting, which had given all of them plenty of time to reach the same conclusion.
Of course, the text they'd received wasn't exactly the same as the one Descroix had transmitted.
Giancola hid a smile of satisfaction behind his studiously concerned expression. Placing Yves Grosclaude in the ambassador's slot on Manticore had paid off even more handsomely than he'd anticipated. He and Grosclaude had served together in Rob Pierre's State Department before Giancola was recalled to Treasury for the Turner Reforms. They'd become friends along the way, and they understood one another, just as they shared a genuine, implacable distrust of the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Despite their history, Giancola had been very cautious about feeling Grosclaude out, but their old friendship and mutual trust had still been there. Which meant no one in Nouveau Paris was going to be aware of any tiny discrepancies between the note Grosclaude had been handed on Manticore and the one Giancola had delivered in Nouveau Paris.
And the discrepancies truly were tiny, he reflected. High Ridge and Descroix had reacted almost precisely as he'd anticipated. All he'd had to do was to remove a half dozen minor connective words to make their response sound even more uncompromising. Best of all was the way they'd reacted to the one critically ambiguous sentence he'd managed to get included in the Pritchart-approved draft of the Republic's own communique.
"I don't understand," Rachel Hanriot said finally. "I know they've been deliberately stringing these talks out. But if that's what they want to continue to do, then why should they be so flatly confrontational?"
"I agree that they're being confrontational," Eloise Pritchart said. "On the other hand, I suppose it's only fair to point out that our last note to them was pretty stiff, too. Frankly, I lost my temper with them." She smiled thinly, topaz eyes bleak. "I'm not saying I wasn't justified when I did, but the language Arnold and I addressed them in certainly could have put their noses sufficiently out of joint to explain some of this."
"In all fairness, Madame President," Giancola said, "I doubt very much that our last note was really needed to 'put their noses out of joint.' Their assumption from the beginning has been that they held the whip hand. Their belief that we would ultimately have no choice but to accept whatever terms they were graciously prepared to grant us has been fundamental to their attitude throughout. I may have had my doubts about the immediate tactical consequences of sending such a stiff note to them, but in a strategic sense, I doubt it's had any significant effect on their posture. All its really done, I suspect, is bring their fundamental arrogance and intransigence out into the open."
"Maybe it has." Thomas Theisman's tone was sharp, and the look he bestowed upon the Secretary of State was not one of unalloyed friendliness. "At the same time, however, there's one point in this note of theirs which strikes me as particularly significant."
"The question about Trevor's Star?" Pritchart asked.
"Exactly." Theisman nodded. "They're specifically asking whether or not we intended to include Trevor's Star in our demand that they acknowledge in principle our sovereignty over the occupied star systems. It seems obvious to me that we didn't, but I suppose, looking back at our own note, that I can see how its wording might have been misconstrued. If they believe we're upping the ante by demanding the return of a star system which they've formally annexed, then
I'd have to call that a fairly ominous development."
"In the greater scheme of things, it's only one of several strands that worry me," Pritchart told him. "And if they'd ever actually sit down to talk with us in good faith, we could tie up all of the confusion in a day or two. On the other hand, I see your point."
"But there's another side to it, too," Denis LePic said. The Attorney General tapped the hardcopy of Descroix's note where it lay on the conference table in front of him. "They're asking for clarification," he pointed out. "I think that's significant. Especially when you couple it with this part at the end where they're talking about the need to 'break the logjam of mutually antagonistic positions.' "
"That last part is nothing more than self-serving eyewash!" Tony Nesbitt retorted. The Secretary of Commerce snorted disdainfully. "It sounds good, and they probably expect it to play well to the 'faxes and their own public opinion, but it doesn't really mean anything. If it did, then they would have offered to give at least a little ground in response to our last note."
"You may be right," LePic replied, although it was fairly obvious from his tone that he didn't think anything of the sort. "On the other hand, their request for clarification could be a sort of backhanded way of suggesting both that they have a genuine concern over the issue and that there's some room for movement. If all they wanted to do was to prepare their own public opinion for some sort of resumption of hostilities, then they wouldn't have asked the question. They'd simply have deliberately assumed that we intended to demand the return of Trevor's Star and rejected our 'presumption' indignantly."
"That's certainly possible," Pritchart said thoughtfully.
"Well, anything's possible," Nesbitt conceded. "I just think some things are more likely than others."
"As we're all well aware," LePic shot back. Nesbitt glared at him, but that was as far as he was prepared to go under Pritchart's cold eye.